Now Ye're Talking - To a Music Website Owner

Try www.goldenplec.com

I'm looking into that .ie problem. Seems like Cloudflare is being a bit Cranky. Was working fine yesterday. Thanks for the heads up Good start so.

UsedToWait wrote: »

^ The address is goldenplec.com, not .ie

Hi Aidan - I'm afraid I don't spend as much time on your revamped site as my ancient laptop doesn't like the pic-heavy content - have you had any other feedback of this nature?

From one other user (The new site is only up 3 months so it's still relatively fresh) and yep older technology might suffer a bit with processing bigger images. That's certainly something we're aware of and I've implemented some image compression in the last few weeks to lower the size and quality of images with a view to making the site load faster and better on slower machines.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that slower internet connections and machines so it's something I do want to improve going forward. Most sections of the site should be relatively image free, the homepage, archive pages and image galleries aside obviously.

If you've any suggestions, I'm open to listening to what you feel is the issue. Or even just to know what part of the site gives you the most trouble and I can focus on such. We do monitor site performance with New Relic to keep an eye on troublesome pages.

Hi Aidan,

What do you think of the role of music websites nowadays, with a lot of people downloading or using spotify, is in terms of reviews?

Do you think the golden age of the over-saturation of music media by the like of Melody Maker and the NME will ever return, albeit in an online format?

ICanMakeSound wrote: »

Hi Aidan,

With the increase in music-related output from the likes of Joe.ie and Her.ie, do you feel GoldenPlec, because of the fact it's ran on a voluntary basis, is running the risk of falling behind? Last year, you were almost always first with gig news but that's rarely the case in recent months. I find myself going to those aforementioned sites more and more often when gigs are announced.

We try to be first where we can be, but it's not always possible. It's hard for us to always be first when we're not working it full time unlike other publications, the fact we do get there first a good deal of the time shows our commitment to providing a great music resource.

However Joe and Her will promote very big shows, but if you're looking for a more complete announcement set of gigs happening all around Ireland of a variety of sizes and venues, we feel we still represent one of the best options in Ireland to find that information.

Alongside announcing gigs, we also review a huge amount of albums (Irish and International), videos, feature content, competitions. Gig announcements are just one aspect of what we try to produce for music lovers in Ireland.

ordinary_girl wrote: »

Hi Aidan,

What do you think of the role of music websites nowadays, with a lot of people downloading or using spotify, is in terms of reviews?

Do you think the golden age of the over-saturation of music media by the like of Melody Maker and the NME will ever return, albeit in an online format?

Do you mean do I think there will be stand-out voices leading the way to amazing new music in the way these publication did back before the internet?

In theory there is a massive saturation of music media as it is, ignoring print for a second, there's thousands if not hundreds of thousands of music websites across the world, attempting to be a voice or a guide to great music, add that to the blogs where individuals try to be that voice on their own and you've got more guides than ever as to what music to listen to.

For GoldenPlec we try to be a good source of opinion and information. We want to be a place you go to, for information on what's happening tonight in Dublin, but also to cast our opinion on live shows, albums and interviews. Our role I've always maintained is to be honest and nothing more. Spotify is great for getting curated content, music generated for you that might be similar to what you're listening to, computer automation is trying to pre-empt music opinion and taste.

For me, there's little to replace human opinion and I have found some of my favourite music through word of mouth or being told to listen to it by some of my team as they work through great Irish and international content. Particularly live shows, which is something automation can't do for you or tell you about.

ordinary_girl wrote: »

Yep, and also do you think there will ever be that collective enthusiasm that these publications espoused and had such a captive audience for? Or do you think multiple online platforms for music journalism makes this increasingly unlikely?

I should clarify that I'm asking this as someone who currently writes for a music website. I'm curious to hear your opinions!

I think it's possible, if something is good enough and passionate enough it will capture the imagination, but how content is consumed has changed drastically.

What has happened online is a more focused and rounded view. You probably find that most sites site into a niche, which means that large portions of music get overlooked by a singular site. I know personally my taste is wide and one single site wouldn't cater for everything I would listen to or be looking for in new bands.

I think i'll always look to sources like 6Music and Rolling Stone. I don't know if i'll ever have one source or voice I trust implicitly. I guess that's just my own curious nature to explore other opinions, other thoughts.

Joe Doe wrote: »

Brave enough running a free distributed print magazine these days
Download the 'mag as PDF' to subscriber list or via QR-Tag may be cost-handier.

Other notes:

1. Home: Page is a tad heavy at circa 3.4mb download, but this is slowly becoming the norm these days.
3. RWD: The RWD ability is good for mobile but drop out the 2nd tier menu and reduce all 2nd rows of content when @screen devices.
2. Top: Prefer the footer to the top area (top is 425px of non-interaction in viewport). wp-themes generally do well with footers anyway.
3. Logo needs a fix as very jagged, simply export from black as tranny png-32. Probably needs a redesign tweak also. Detracts from all else.
4. Roll back that 2nd hero unit from x12 slides to maybe x5 max. See #1
5. Create x3 rotating slides for main masthead instead of one static image. See #3

All interesting points. There's two 3's
1. Agree, I'm looking to reduce image weight here.
3. RWD - Will definitely look into this, this was a paid for design by an agency but i've spent more time fixing it for things like these. I'll look into the @screen stuff.
2. Top : if you mean the 1400 x 400 area It's static, I can look into rotating slides but not sure if it needs to be a content area. It does have links to key sections depending on where you are in the site.
3. Jagged Logo? I'd love a screenie, seems fine here.
4. Yeah that needs limiting a bit further, totally agree.
5. Something i'll consider as mentioned above.

Joe Doe wrote: »

Ah yes got the numbers all jumbled up somewhat.

RWD: The RWD is working 100% fine, just an optional 'custom enhancement' to drop the 2nd level nav (only for @screen devices), probably using .hide class or display:hidden etc when on mobiles.
TOP: Main area typically about 2/3 slides would add interest here. Not editorial content, just a nice shop window as such. E.g. argos.co.uk updated regularly (just an image swap).
LOGO: Def looks jagged here on Opera (but yes is it is fine on Chrome etc, ?spooky). Opera shows as if it was exported out from white not black, then placed on black background. Logo design a bit pedestrian.

That's good info, i'll check out Opera to be sure and figure out what is happening. Thanks for the heads up.

On the magazine point I never address. The magazine will be on Issuu.com shortly, but the point of the project is to be in the physical in the hand form. We've been digital all our 12 - 13 years. We wanted to do something we've never done before and try our hands at being a publisher.

There's something I've always wondered about GoldenPlec; why it's not possible to buy music from the site?

As the go-to site for Irish music, where I often read about new bands, it just seemed like it would be easy (for me, not GoldenPlec!) to stream/buy the music that's reviewed there.

Without asking about any sensitive commercial detail, is it something that GP has ever looked into, or something that you think would suit the site/team? Might we ever see a GoldenPlec label?

OSI wrote: »

Cloudflare are having issues this morning Aidan:

http://www.cloudflarestatus.com/



Hence, your unfortunately timed issues.

Thanks, looks good now and I used the advise from above to lower the homepage size to 1.5mb from 3.9mb. So something positive has come from it, along with a short list of other stuff to look into.

Hopefully Tech Support with GP is sorted now :P

Gits_bone wrote: »

Well this turned into a thread about website crashes and site improvements. :pac:

You're telling me The power of feedback

Gits_bone wrote: »

As someone who has never visited your site previously, what makes you unique?

I think what makes us unique is our team. We've been going 12 - 12.5 years now. We've always ran it from a point of helping others and helping promote great music. So many others would be similar, but I think we've got a variety of stuff that few other places will match.

Other sites tend to niche into one target audience, maybe it's location based, maybe it's genre based, maybe it's only stuff you like (blog style), but GoldenPlec has always been there to be as comprehensive as possible for all genres, all locations in Ireland, all sizes.

This makes our workload higher, but our potential to find great content for stuff you like higher. We also have fun with it, don't take ourselves too seriously and can laugh when we make mistakes. Nobodies job is on the line.

The team themselves are the standout for me, they are the reason I continue to pump hours of my personal time into keeping listings up to dates, helping keep PR and promoters onside so they can review great albums and live shows before everyone else. They are so dedicated to the cause and all give up their time to help us with any project that resonates with them. It's corny but the people I've met through running this site have gone on to be some of my most reliable and dependable friends and sources of inspiration.

Dolbert wrote: »

Thanks for the recent review guys! You must get inundated with review requests from bands and artists. What can an act do to make themselves stand out amongst the pile? Conversely, is there anything that'd immediately put you off checking a band out?

Good god, how long have you got.

Do we want your music - First thing first, assume we want your music. Number one email we get is "Would you be interested in reviewing...."

Yes we're always interested, send the music with your first email.

Attachments - That's 1990's method of distribution and you're filling up our inbox. Dropbox, Bandcamp with download code, Private soundcloud (preferably with download option) and you're away in a hack.

Pictures - Don't insert them into the content of your mail, if we want to look at you we'll click the attachment.

Social Media - No image / social media links? How do you propose we find out more about your band that formed 3 weeks ago? This is something you might think obvious, but there is a serious level of expectation that we have infinite hours to search google to find you. From an admin side of things, that's almost an instant trash box because you're asking me to invest time in finding you. No website admin / reviewer wants to play where's waldo with a new band (often to find no social media or websites for the band exist)

Being Clear - Some album streams, videos etc are sent in with a "we're launching this on March 2nd (example) and aren't clear if we can or can't post said content straight away and the launch is just for on-sale or if they want the content to be kept under wraps until the release date. We'll always edge on the side of caution to protect the band, but it creates email tennis.

Look at where you're sending - This one is huge, Nialler9 says this one a lot, he gets sent content he won't review because, well he's never covered that style of music etc, like sending pop music into a metal magazine. On GoldenPlec our new site has a 1400 x 400 banner image. If we create content on you we have to jiggle an image into this size and shape. If a band has the foresight to look where they are sending it and pre-empt that we might need this style of image, it saves us a lot of effort.

Event Details - We try to simplify the process with our submission form on www.goldenplec.com/contact-us/ which lets bands submit the key details, but many don't submit an image or on sale dates or where to buy tickets, probably because it's quicker submitting to not fill these things out, but they are key information that anyone that might consider going to your gig needs to know.

Know Your Audience - Many people repeatedly ask us when they will get a review etc. We take all submissions and put them in our queue to review, but as we're not full time sitting there waiting for new content to review, our reviewers pick up content generally as they finish reviewing their last album or EP. We can't guarantee a review because someone has to decide to take your album to review for example. Our queue of albums to sort is consistently around the size of 40-80 depending on time of year. It's relentless and we do our best but unfortunately we won't get to everything and mailing us all the time with when questions won't speed things up.

Decent Notice - This is a big one, you probably know you're playing a gig weeks or months in advance. So often we get sent a mail a few days before looking for coverage on the site either mentioning the gig in our listings or to come down and review. Our team are busy people, giving them a few days notice is impossible, we put all offers of guestlist etc to our team but half the time there isn't enough time for them to even attempt to be free. It's such a simple consideration but if you do everything last minute you will most likely get very little.

There's probably more but that's some key stuff that off the top of my head comes into my inbox every day that makes instantly helping said band that little harder.

CTYIgirl wrote: »

I read ye a fair amount, as both my cousin and a good friend do work with GP (gotta get that plug in, eh?) One thing I've noticed about GP is that you seem to cover nearly every type of music, I've seen artists from Taylor Swift to Slipknot to Kacey Musgraves up there. Is it that you try to do that, or is it just a quirk that the contributors involved like lots of different types of music?

Actively try. That's part of what we are. We don't look down on music genres with any degree of snobbery. There's an audience for all the music, something we don't do well is dance music, but we try to cover the rest of the genres and we do actively keep an eye out for writers applying with varied taste.

We first and foremost on album reviews cover Irish and review international albums as an secondary. The live stuff we try to cover as wide a range and as many as possible, both with written reviews and photography to provide a massive ranging appeal across music going public in Ireland.

Right now I'm working on trying to make our events section the most comprehensive in Ireland. A lot of planning on that at the moment and of course our magazine being on brand and covering as much as possible without pandering too much to big shows or bands.

What's hardest to know is, how much of what we're trying to do, people care about. traffic wise the biggest bursts of traffic still come from the big name bands and shows, but there's a very consistent body of traffic that comes to Irish only content and that's the part we try to grow and grow where possible. Increasing interest and volume.